How secure is your sensitive business data?

Recent statistics have shown that more than half of sensitive corporate data resides on user desktops, laptops and removable USB drives. This data can represent months or years of work. Losing this data is not only frustrating, but more importantly, extremely damaging to the company. Productivity aside, theft or loss of sensitive data puts organisations at serious risk of regulatory penalties, privacy violations and brand equity damage.

Software-as-a-service has built-in security advantages

With traditional software, employees save data to insecure USB drives, discs and laptops for easy access. With Google Apps, because employees can access information securely from anywhere, they're less likely to save sensitive data locally. And with Google Apps' 99.9% uptime guarantee*, you can be confident that employees will have access whenever they need it.

Why is Google Apps secure?

Google operates one of the largest networks of distributed data centres in the world and we go to great lengths to protect the data and intellectual property on these servers. These facilities are protected around the clock and we have a dedicated security operations team who focuses specifically on maintaining the security of our environment. The controls, processes and policies that protect these data have successfully completed a SAS 70 Type II audit. There are three main components to our security practices:

• People – Google employs a full-time information security team including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and network security. This team is responsible for the company’s perimeter defence systems, security review processes and customised security infrastructure, as well as for developing, documenting and implementing Google’s security policies and standards.
• Process – Security is part of the Google DNA. Each application is built from the ground up with security in mind. Google applications go through multiple security reviews as part of the Secure Code development process. The application development environment is closely restricted and carefully monitored to maximise security. External security audits are also regularly conducted to provide additional assurance.
• Technology – Google Apps data is fractured and obfuscated across multiple servers and disks, making it human-unreadable. Data is replicated in multiple data centres for redundancy and consistent availability. To reduce exploit risks, each Google server is custom-built with only the necessary software components and the homogeneous server architecture enables rapid updates and configuration changes across the entire network when necessary.

We rely on Google Apps ourselves

We trust our own data to the products available to you. Google employees use Gmail for all corporate email, Google Calendar to schedule all meetings and events, and Google Talk to instant message among project teams. We use Google Docs for sensitive content like product design specs, and Google Sites to manage team projects.

* The 99.9% uptime SLA for Google Apps is offered to organisations using Google Apps for Business, as described in the Google Apps for Business Terms of Service.